Resource use and Japan's natural environment

An important part of nature is how we care for and preserve the planet’s natural resources. Having lived in Australia and the US before Japan, one thing that immediately became noticeable to me here is how people heat and cool their houses.

In both Australia and the US, it’s very common to have ducted heating and cooling systems which pump hot or cold air to every room of your home. Yes, that means your house is either refreshingly cool or toasty warm depending on the time of year, but from a resource usage perspective it can be quite wasteful if you’re heating or cooling rooms that no one is using.

Enter my 70s build house in Niigata, and it’s quite a different story. We have gas heaters in two rooms, and air conditioning units in those two same rooms. The rest of the house is at the will of nature, and while it has certainly been an adjustment, it means we’re significantly more mindful of our energy use.

Houses in Japan are built differently than back home, and in my experience, heating and AC are not used as frequently. Pic Credit: Tanaka Juuyoh/CC By 2.0 

Many of my neighbors don’t even use air con during the summer months, and they chuckle at us when we complain about the heat and humidity. I wouldn’t recommend this from a sheer safety perspective, because each year in the news I see stories about people passing away due to heat exhaustion. However, I think a big part of it is cultural – there’s the idea that using air conditioning, particularly at night, will mean you catch a cold.

Something else I’ve noticed here in Japan is an increased interest in the passive house concept – it’s something I think is really cool, and I’d love to have a passive house as my forever home in the future. There’s a great website called Passive House Japan which has a bunch of information on the topic, but essentially passive houses are designed with eco-friendly principles in mind. For instance, most Japanese houses don’t have adequate insulation (or in the case of my house, any at all, it seems!) and as a result it’s easy for weather extremes to really permeate a home.

Passive houses use things like double glazed windows and insulation to avoid these massive seasonal weather fluctuations, and as a result the houses stay at a more pleasant year-round temperature without the need for AC or heating. Not only is this a great benefit for the environment over the long term, but it means you save money with utility bills, too. I’ve personally noticed that the cost of living is slowly but surely going up, so being able to save on bills is such an advantage.

I personally just love the sleek, modern look to many of these passive houses, too – you can check out some of their existing designs on the website here.

Have you noticed any other ways that Japan seems to be mindful of the natural environment through energy use?